When Beyond Meat, the delicious, pea protein-based meat substitute company, offered to send samples of their products for me to create a recipe, I hella obliged. I absolutely love using it in salads, wraps, and recipes like the one I’m sharing today. While I tend to avoid meat substitutes due to their being overly processed and sort of strange on principle, I really like how Beyond Meat is made from simple ingredients, is gluten- and GMO-free. Beyond Meat is available in various health food stores and can be purchased in prepared items at a chain called Tropical Smoothie. If you’d prefer to make Beyond Meat at home, here’s a recipe using Beyond Meat Lightly Seasoned Chicken-Free Strips that really hits the spot.

About a year ago, I dreamed of creating a charity cookbook project to benefit Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in Woodstock, NY. I absolutely LOVE Woodstock, and am in awe of how much they do to help better the lives of non-human (and human!) animals. My vision for the cookbook was to assemble the weirdest, most unique, and delicious recipes from top vegan chefs, bloggers and authors around the world and sell this collection to benefit the sanctuary and donate 100% of proceeds to go towards helping the animals. Today, my dream has come true!

Even with all the weird Landmark stuff and employee lawsuits and everything else I still think Cafe Gratitude is the shit (pardon my French, I’ve just returned from a trip to Montreal!) and I will forever love the restaurant, its creators, the cookbooks from the brand, and everything about the experience of dining there.

While living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had easy access to four Cafe Gratitude locations: the Berkeley restaurant, which was super near my apartment while I was living in Berkeley, the San Francisco Harrison St. location while I was living in the Mission District, the Whole Foods in-store mini cafe in Oakland near my nonprofit jobs in downtown Oakland, and the San Rafael location while visiting The Chocolate Puma in gorgeous Marin.

When I recently lived in LA for a few months, the Larchmont Cafe Gratitude location nourished me after yoga classes and fueled me for my journey to Babycakes NYC a few hundred feet down the road. Cafe Gratitude has since closed some locations and branched out to Los Angeles and beyond (Kansas is SO lucky!) and I’ve moved to the East Coast (for now!)

Since re-locating to Philly, I’ve really been craving the “I Am Whole” bowl for a while. While I’m due to return to LA to eat at Cafe Gratitude visit my incredibly amazing brother Asher, I decided that it’s time I make the dish from scratch and stop relying on the amazing chefs at Cafe Gratitude to get my Whole fix. I own the I Am Grateful cookbook and it has a super detailed version of the entree mapped out, and though I’ve glanced at it plenty of times while searching through for other recipes, I’ve found it difficult to bring myself to take all of the elaborate steps necessary to make it.

Tonight, I decided to make a super-easy, inauthentic but delicious version of the “I Am Whole” bowl. Instead of using the recipe in Cafe Gratitude’s cookbook (which I highly recommend picking up, by the way!) I winged it and took shortcuts and the results were really delicious. The dish wasn’t quite as awesome as the dish at the restaurants–the kale wasn’t massaged properly, the Aduki beans came from an Eden Organics can rather than being lovingly stewed, sauerkraut was substituted for the restaurant’s homemade kim chee, I didn’t cut the carrots brilliantly, the tahini sauce was very simple–you get the idea. But still, the results were really solid. I truly am grateful for this dish and the restaurants that inspired it, and invite you to make it for yourself or your family, knowing full well that you’re filling your body(ies) with super yummy whole ingredients!

Greetings, Queer Vegan Food readers! Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Ellen Degeneres egg posts. The discussions have been enlightening and I think very useful in figuring out how our vegan movement needs to address the backyard egg movement.

Today, I am beyond excited to post this article written by guest blogger Jessica Zafonte! In this guest blog, Jessica calls attention to unique queer-vegan issues within the gay parenting-themed American television series “The New Normal,” which airs on NBC and is co-produced by openly gay Ryan Murphy and out lesbian Ali Adler (both of whom also work on the series Glee, another LGBTQ-themed show). Jessica calls attention to how animal welfare is portrayed in this series, and her discussion about the show’s portrayal of how the privileged gay characters (both of whom are wealthy, male, and able-bodied) relate with animal welfare concerns on the television series is excellent and needed. LGBTQ issues and animal welfare issues are inextricably linked.

Jessica asks us to consider why an opportunity to showcase a meaningful connection between oppression against animals and LGBTQ folks was squandered when the television series made a muck of the topic of animal welfare during a recent episode. Jessica wonders if the show’s creators fear that in order to portray gay themes to mainstream audiences, they cannot simultaneously work against oppression of other groups (or even, I would add, non-privileged gay groups)?

I invite you to read Jessica’s fascinating, well-written and insightful post, and to leave a comment and share your thoughts on her post and this topic:

Guest Post: “The New Normal” TV Show’s Attitude About Food Animals

By Jessica Zafonte

I know that in order for our society to awaken to the cruelty and injustice behind raising and killing animals for food and for our culture’s consumption to move towards a more compassionate diet, the topic will need to enter the public discourse and become a mainstream debate. However, as I’m sure many of you can understand, currently when the mainstream media address any animal issues they are usually frighteningly misinformed and one-sided. I often wish that a given newspaper article/news segment/ TV show just chose to ignore the subject rather than address it in such a biased or unhelpful way. But I think it is important to remember that before any societal norm can change, it has to be discussed by those on both sides of the issue. It might seem like things are getting worse before they can get better.

This topic came to mind after watching the Thanksgiving Episode of NBC’s new show, “The New Normal.” For those of you not familiar, the show is based around a gay couple who hire a surrogate to carry their child. The antagonist of the show is the uber-conservative, angry, homophobic, racist, etc. grandmother of the surrogate mom. Although the show is cheesy and gets most of its laughs from playing off of stereotypes, it does promote a progressive and pro-gay rights message. When I read the synopsis on a recent episode on Hulu though my heart sunk. It stated that upon going to buy a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, two of the main characters decide instead to rescue all of the turkeys at the farm. Sounds like a good thing, no? But I knew it was too good to be true. Sure enough, while the “pardoning” of all the turkeys motivates the characters to initially acknowledge that Thanksgiving is about peace, compassion, and forgiveness, they ultimately regress to their old ways of thinking about these animals.

Characters on “The New Normal” prepare for a dinner party.

The more flamboyant half of the gay couple takes the daughter of the surrogate (don’t get bogged down in the details) to an organic farm where they can buy a “hormone-free, antibiotic-free” turkey. (Since the surrogate is pregnant of course, otherwise it would be perfectly fine to put these sorts of additives into the human body). They are then horrified when the farmer tells them to pick their turkey and that he will kill it right in front of them (as the camera zooms into a bloody tree stump and axe). The duo is horrified – it was their understanding that they’d be buying something already killed and wrapped up- something that didn’t look like the living thing it was! Yes, I like this! Demonstrating the disconnect between living animals and the food we eat! Upon returning home, with the rescued living turkeys in tow, the closed-minded grandma, known for her offensive and ignorant lines, is appalled that the family won’t be eating turkey for their holiday meal, insisting that “meat is American” and that “vegetables are for poor people.” At this point I’m really excited.

This seemed like it was turning out to be a humorous commentary on what is now a growing awareness of the harm and unhealthiness behind animal agriculture! The character making these ridiculous statements is the one that always says the things that are “wrong” and “non-progressive,” after all. But, to my great disappointment, it was all downhill from there. After numerous comments about how stupid and dirty the turkeys are, the family sits down to their tofurkey dinner and then proceeds to be so revolted by the meat substitute that they all simultaneously spit it out onto their plates. Cut to the last scene where the little girl goes off to school and the mother snickers at the turkeys and tells them they will make a “delicious Christmas meal.” End scene. Heart drops. Blood pressure rises. So even a show that attempts to convey an important message of compassion and tolerance to a wide audience, which inevitably includes many prejudiced or closed-minded folks, just cannot extend this kindness and acceptance to animals?

Gays have been oppressed, marginalized, and physically and emotionally attacked throughout history – but I think we all derive hope from the fact that the public sentiment is finally changing. Yet the show proceeded to focus this same cruel and unjust treatment on living, breathing, feeling animals. Even the characters who were undeniably created by the show’s writers to stand for acceptance of an “alternative” lifestyle, tolerance of those difference from us, and compassion towards those we may not understand, acted inconsistently with their own moral fibers.

I often feel similarly after receiving google alerts that I set up for the words “vegan,” “animal rights” and “animal welfare.” Some of the articles that they lead me to are from inside the animal agriculture industry, where the authors bash animal activists for being extremist. One such article said something to the effect that only farmers know what is truly best for their animals, not animal activists. After my blood stopped boiling I began to think that maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing. First, Big Ag is getting scared of those on the side of animal welfare. If we weren’t a threat to the way they run their businesses (aka torture animals) then they would not be discussing this in the first place. (See this somewhat encouraging article in “Alfa Farmers,” acknowledging that the animal rights movement includes some “very influential people,” are “well-funded” and worries that “in the future, will one out of five people be vegans?” And that they cannot “underestimate our society’s ability to change.”). Second, the more publicity a topic is given, the greater chance that someone who has not yet made his/her mind up on the issue or even though about it, will begin to. Change doesn’t happen before discussion and a fight. Just like that famous Mahatma Gandhi quote: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” I think right now our movement is somewhere in between the” laughing at you” and “fighting you” stage.

But the underlying question is why the public sentiment on this topic is so negative, even among educated, caring, progressive individuals? Is caring about animals just TOO progressive? Is veganism really that radical? I know that a lot of us tend to live in our vegan bubbles but when we step out of them we realize that many people do see our lifestyles as extreme and our way of thinking as “outside the box,” to put it mildly. But not long ago, a non-heterosexual lifestyle was seen as the exact same way, and still is by many people. The same is true throughout history of our view and treatment of other races and cultures. In today’s age, is having no compassion for and killing/eating animals the great equalizer?

Is this the issue on which conservatives and liberals, gays and straights, blacks and whites can agree on? And if so, why? Is an iteration of the common enemy theory? Do we, as a society, always need to be marginalizing some group in order to function? I don’t think so. I think that the animal agriculture issue is one that most of society is still uneducated about, especially as farm animals become more out of the public eye than ever before, closed behind factory farm doors. So while I sometimes wish that no one would even touch on the food/animal issue if it is going to be done in a misinformed, hypocritical, closed minded way, maybe this is actually the first step.

Jessica Zafonte is a vegan animal lover and attorney. She worked as a criminal prosecutor in Brooklyn before becoming an associate at a large law firm practicing patent litigation. Jessica lives in New York City with her boyfriend, three cats rescued off the streets and fifteen mice rescued from a lab.

This is a large sea veggie salad rich with wakame, spirulina, kelp, sesame seeds, sesame oil and locally grown greens, made into a sandwich by harnessing the power of large cabbage leaves (substituted for bread). Queer Vegan Food is all about crossing boundaries, transgressing social culinary norms and straddling multiple identity categories. With that in mind, I ask you to accept that this is not a salad, but rather a sandwich. Or call it whatever you will–make it, and I bet you’ll agree with me that it’s absolutely healthfully delicious!

This recipe contains several different kinds of dense vegan protein mixed with spices and a colorful cornucopia of lightly steamed veggies. This energy-dense meal can satisfy any appetite, and is great dish to serve vegan naysayers who ask the hackneyed question “where do you get your protein?” Cooks in under 35 minutes, more or less including veggie prep time.

While living and working at an all-raw vegan retreat center, I enjoyed my fair share of raw vegan pizza, which some might argue has a better nutrition profile than any cooked gluten-free pie. Perhaps this is true, but I’ve tried tons of raw pizza combinations, since the center served it more or less weekly and I worked there for almost two years, and I got pretty tired of dense nut-, flax- and seed-based crusts, especially when frequently adorned with hearty nut and seed cheeses.

If you also love gluten-free (or just delicious) vegan pizza but don’t have a ton of extra time or cash to spend on it, this may be your new mana. It’s easy to make, filled with protein in the quinoa, and can be made with whatever local organic veggies you have on hand. Hope you like it!

Soak quinoa for 3-8 hours or overnight in 4 cups water. After, drain quinoa and blend in vitamix with water and flour into a dough. Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees, and spread some flour and a touch of oil on the pan to keep the dough from sticking. Then spread the dough onto the pan evenly (about 1/8-1/4 inch thick, depending on your crust texture preference. Bake for 8-10 minutes, then flip over and bake for another 8-10 minutes. Add tomato sauce and veggies and bake for another 4-5 minutes. Enjoy!